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Friday, 4 January 2013

How to set proxy authentication for applications in Ubuntu

Applications in Ubuntu can be configured to use your proxy authentication settings by configuring it in gsettings / dconf.

From the official GNOME site: dconf is a low-level configuration system. Its main purpose is to
provide a backend to GSettings on platforms that don't already have
configuration storage systems.

In order to set and authenticate proxy, type dconf-editor at the terminal. If it asks you to install dconf-tools, then type

sudo apt-get install dconf-tools

and enter your password and then, after installation, type

dconf-editor

.
A window, as shown below, shall open.

On your left hand side panel, click on the arrow besides "system", then on the arrow besides "proxy".

Check whether the mode is "manual".

Now, click on http and set your password and user-name by clicking on "Value" field in "authentication-password" and "authentication-user" respectively. Let the "enabled" and "use-authentication" fields have a tick on them.

Next, click on ftp, https and socks and type your host and port-number. Unfortunately, these cannot be assigned authentication parameters for reasons I am not aware of.

You can also download this script, which I prepared to configure your proxy settings.

How to use this script:

1) Clicking on the link will lead you to a Google document, click on "Download" and then on "Save".

2) It will get saved to the path either given by you or most probably to your "Downloads" directory.

3) Open your terminal and go to location where the file is saved. Suppose the file is saved on the "Desktop". Type

cd Desktop

4) Type

sudo bash proth.

This will ask for your password, after entering your password, it will ask you for the host, port no, user-name and password for authentication. Give the appropriate details and you are done!